About The San Francisco Welcome Back Center

Launched in 2001 as a program of Community Health Works, a partnership between City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Center served as the pilot site for the Initiative. After receiving initial funding through a grant from The California Endowment, the center came to serve participants from more than ten counties in the state. Since its launch, the San Francisco center served more than 3,100 individuals. The Initiative has since expanded to include an additional 11 centers is 10 states.

The systems and services established by the Welcome Back Initiative and first implemented by the San Francisco Welcome Back Center were directly based on helping immigrant health professionals overcome barriers and achieve their career goals. ​In the needs assessment phase carried out by the San Francisco Welcome Back Center, foreign-trained health professionals consistently identified four barriers to their integration into the health workforce in the U.S.: limited English language proficiency, limited financial resources and time, a lack of familiarity with the U.S. health care system, and limited credit given by educational institutions for their foreign education. As a result, the San Francisco Welcome Back Center developed a program model that incorporates individual case management, career counseling services, curricula development, resource coordination, and group interventions with the expected outcome of identifying viable career pathways that will enable immigrant health professionals to return to providing health services to communities in need. ​The San Francisco Welcome Back Center remains the lead site of the entire Welcome Back Initiative. The dedicated staff at this center strive to ensure the Initiative is working towards achieving its goal. Due to inadequate funding the center closed its doors for direct services on November 4th, 2014. Although it does not have the financial resources to offer one one one services to internationally trained health professionals at this time, the San Francisco center continues to work towards its mission through advocacy work.

Contact Information

1600 Holloway Ave HSS 321San Francisco, CA 94132

jrfp@sfsu.edu

DISCLAIMER: The Welcome Back Initiative only offers services in the United States.